Browse Quotes

618 quotes in the collection

• It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.

  Mark Twain

• The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future.

  Gifford Pinchot

• Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t…

  Steve Jobs

• My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

  Adrienne Rich

• No amount of belief makes something a fact.

  James Randi

• I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

  Henry David Thoreau

• But all of this reasoning begins with at least one fundamental flaw: it rests upon forgetting that human beings are, in fact, a part and product of the Natural world, every bit as much as pond scum and chipmunks and coral reefs and combustible…

  Usha Alexander

• The Mesopotamian experiment in its modern instantiation still fundamentally relies upon maximizing agriculture, minimizing Nature, and producing a growing material surplus to support the expanding tiers of a (now global) class system, rooted in…

  Usha Alexander

• Until very recently in the human story, material technologies were developed without being incentivized by personal enrichment or reward but, rather, knowledge was widely shared in what we might call an “open source” model; perhaps as a result…

  Usha Alexander

• It is said sometimes that the great teachers and mentors, the rabbis and gurus, achieve their ends by inducting the disciple into a kind of secret circle of knowledge and belief, make of their charisma a kind of gift. The more I think about it,…

  Adam Gopnik

• Every science must devise its own instruments.

  Alfred Whitehead

• “But of course!” That’s the best sort of breakthrough idea. An idea that after it is seen, can’t be unseen, an idea that changes what comes next. No need to change the world. A tiny part of the world, even one person, is enough for today.

  Seth Godin

• Write something. Then improve it. Then write something else. Repeat this process until you have a post. Then post it. Then repeat this process. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s simply a fear of bad writing. Do enough bad…

  Seth Godin

• Unlike most of the sciences, astronomy is always done at a distance. You can see the stars, but you can’t do anything about them. Sometimes the media would like us to believe that we’re all astronomers, simply passive witnesses in a world out…

  Seth Godin

• Technology that doesn’t solve a problem for the people using it isn’t finished yet.

  Seth Godin

• What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

  Mark Twain

• We believe we can destroy our habitat without also destroying ourselves. How could we be so tragically wrong? The glory of the universe, whether it comes from God or nature, has a value beyond its usefulness to humans. No matter if you’re a…

  Kathleen Dean Moore

• Consider a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his…

  Vannevar Bush

• Writing doesn’t prove anything, And it only rarely persuades. It does something much better. It attests. It witnesses. It shares your interest in what you noticed. It reports the nature of your attention. It suggests the possibilities of…

  Verlyn Klinkenborg

• Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

  Francis Bacon